Jess Piper is a former teacher who lives on a farm in Missouri and fights for democracy. She urges Democrats to run everywhere. In most districts like hers, the elections are uncontested. She writes here about a groundswell to restore reproductive rights in Missouri.
Abortion is on the ballot in November in Missouri. Missouri will be the first state to overturn a complete ban. And, you read that right…I do not doubt that we will have enough votes to overturn the ban and enshrine the right to reproductive healthcare in Missouri.
Abortion rights supporters have prevailed in all seven states that already had decided ballot measures since 2022: California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, and Vermont.
And now Missouri will have the chance.
If approved, the initiative would amend the state’s constitution to establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, remove the state’s current restrictions on abortion, allow the regulation of reproductive health care to improve a patient’s health, and require the government not to discriminate against people providing or seeking reproductive health care.
Listen, I am not going to blow smoke up your you-know-what and act like Missouri will flip blue this year, but I am going to be optimistic for a minute. Optimistic about Missouri…a state with a 22 year GOP supermajority and a GOP trifecta.
Missourians have had enough. We currently have a total abortion ban — no exceptions for rape or incest. We were the first state to ban the procedure after Roe fell with our AG out in front of cameras within minutes of the Dobbs decision.
Missourians needed 180K signatures to put reproductive rights on the ballot. We gathered 380K signatures. 200,000 more than we needed. We crushed it. We killed it. We proved that not only do most folks want to vote to restore abortion rights, but that hundreds of thousands would crawl across broken glass to find and sign a petition.
When I was gathering signatures in rural Missouri, one woman was waiting for us as we set up the petition, signed it, and then texted her Bible group to remind them to come by and sign it. Yes, her Bible group.
And the language is clear. We were able to take out extremist language that could have confused voters. Here is the language as it will be presented on the ballot in November: Missouri Ballot Measure.
Rural folks are ready to regain access to abortion.
The protest photo above was taken in 2019. But, in rural spaces, we have been fighting much longer. People in my part of the state haven’t had access to abortion for over a decade. The only functioning clinic in the state was in St Louis and that is a 5-hour drive for folks in NW Missouri. We’ve been dealing with a lack of access for much longer than most realize.
Even more than having abortion on the ballot? We have other initiatives to legalize sports betting and raise the minimum wage and guarantee paid sick leave. These three initiatives will bring out folks who may not vote regularly…these initiatives could be game-changers themselves by increasing turnout which is usually good for Democrats.
More than that? We have Harris at the top of the ticket and we have a pro-choice woman running to be governor in Missouri. Crystal Quade will be tasked this November with beating Mike Kehoe, our current Lt Governor, but don’t think that it can’t be done.
Quade is a current legislator and the Minority Leader in the House. She is a proud working-class woman who has fought for Missourians by arguing for funding public schools, fighting for abortion rights and union wages, and feeding kids.
On the other hand, Mike Kehoe voted to sell off Missouri farmland to foreign governments and for union-busting Right to Work legislation. Kehoe believes in “school choice” measures that drain public schools of funding that is then sent to private religious schools. He is also in favor of the current abortion ban.
While serving in the Missouri Senate, Kehoe backed abortion restrictions and claimed that he “voted for every pro-life, every sanctity of life bill since I’ve been in the Senate.”
During his tenure, he voted to pass restrictions on abortion, like HB 400 in 2013, which “would require a doctor to be physically present when an abortion-inducing drug is first administered.” That bill restricted abortions, particularly in rural areas where doctors are not readily available. Additionally, in 2014, Kehoe voted to pass HB 1307 to increase the waiting period for abortions from 24 hours to 72 hours.
So, here’s the thing…we have a chance to change Missouri in November. I don’t know that we can flip enough seats to defeat the supermajorities in the House and the Senate, but I know we can elect Crystal Quade if we all work together. And that’s exactly what we did to get the signatures to put abortion on the ballot in the first place.
It was hard work — we did it. We can elect Harris and Quade with an education campaign, engaged voters, including young voters, and an increased turnout. This is hard work. This can be done.
Everywhere I look, people are excited. Whether I’m at Walmart or Ace Hardware or Casey’s, there is hope. People, even rural people, are filled with optimism. And I’m not going to act like that is normal. Excitement and hope are sometimes hard to find in rural progressive politics, but it’s all I hear and see.
Eyes are bright and people aren’t whispering about it. Look around…this is what democracy looks like.
~Jess
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I live in Festus, Missouri….There seems to be some change in women’s attitude, but overall…..Trump remains a frightening creature. I hope that Columbia, Missouri will be helpful, and maybe Kansas City. Tell me if I am wrong…..KMOX in St. Louis is not very responsible about reporting the differences between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
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IMO here’s where the Republicans have become completely blind to their own against hateful agenda against women. Guess what? Women vote, and last time I looked, abortion, or pregnancy-related medical care, wasn’t and still isn’t a partisan issue. Did abortion demand just magically dry up just because a corrupt SC demanded it so? Of course not, and now, not only are these states willing to enshrine the right to choose, that momentum may even be enough to flip local elections. Collectively, women have a lot of power in this election, and the Republicans just wish that we would all go back to the kitchen and stop worrying our pretty little heads about it.
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U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, is even spending money on campaign advertising, which is a sign that the Republicans are not convinced that they will win the statewide offices by the usual landslide.
Scott Faughn, a conservative political media publisher, even acknowledged that the Republican Party went too far with the abortion ban and that many Republican voters do not support it.
Now, if only we could get the electoral college obliterated!
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I got to thinking that there are some issues that sit solidly in the place of Liberty. You cannot outlaw a lot of human behavior.
I think abortion is one of those things. I really don’t like it. We ought to want every fragment of life. We ought to honor the buffalo we kill for meat, and value the trees we turn into beautiful wood. But sometimes it has to be a thing, and its rarity is best assured under a legal status.
What else is like this?
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO ABORTION
THE NINTH AMENDMENT: Nowhere in the Constitution is it written that there is a constitutional right to live in a racially mixed marriage as does Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and many states had laws prohibiting mixed marriages. But those laws were overturned and Thomas got that constitutional right because the 9th Amendment says that basic human rights, like the right to interracial marriage and the right to abortion, DO NOT HAVE TO BE STATED IN THE CONSTITUTION in order to be constitutional rights because The Ninth Amendment says: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
The current Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion not only violates the 9th Amendment, it violates the religious rights of many citizens. The ruling is supportive of the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church to which the six majority Justices belong.
In 1973, the Supreme Court set “viability” — the point at which a fetus can survive outside of the womb — as the dividing line after which some restrictions can be imposed on abortion rights because even with all of today’s medical miracles to keep a prematurely born or aborted fetus alive, of all the tens of thousands of cases 90% OF FETUSES BORN AT 22 WEEKS DO NOT SURVIVE, and data shows that the majority of those that manage to be kept alive live the rest of their lives with a combination of BIRTH DEFECTS that include mental impairment, cerebral palsy, breathing problems, blindness, deafness, and other disorders that often require frequent hospitalizations during their lifetimes.
The University of London scientist whose research is cited by the Supreme Court in its ruling to take away abortion rights says that his research has been misrepresented by Justice Alito and the Supreme Court’s activist conservative majority. Neuroscientist Dr. Giandomenico Iannetti says that the Court is ABSOLUTELY WRONG to say that his research shows that a fetus can feel pain when it is less than 24 weeks of development. “My results by no means imply that,” Dr. Iannetti declares. “I feel they were used in a clever way to make a point.” And Dr. John Wood, molecular neurobiologist at the University, points out that all serious scientists agree that a fetus can NOT feel pain until at least 24 weeks “and perhaps not even then.” Dr. Vania Apkarian, head of the Center for Transitional Pain Research at Chicago’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says that the medical evidence on a fetus not feeling pain before 24 weeks or longer has not changed in 50 years and remains “irrefutable”.
THE BIBLE DOES NOT CONDEMN ABORTION
The Talmud says that for the first 40 days of a woman’s pregnancy, the fetus is considered mere fluid and is just part of the mother’s body, like an appendix or liver. Only after the fetus’s head emerges from the womb at birth and takes a breath is the baby considered a “nefesh” – Hebrew for “soul” or “spirit” – a human person.
Legislated definitions of a fetal “personhood” prior to a live birth violate that religious belief of Jews and therefore also violate the Constitution.
Out of more than 600 laws of Moses, which includes the 10 Commandments, NONE — not one — comments on abortion. In fact, the Mosaic law in Exodus 21:22-25 clearly shows that causing the abortion of a fetus is NOT MURDER. Exodus 21:22-25 says that if a woman’s fetus is aborted as the result of an altercation with a man, the man who caused abortion should only pay a fine that is to be determined by the woman’s husband, but if the woman dies, the man is to be executed: “If a man strives with a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet there is no harm to the woman, he shall be punished according to what the woman’s husband determines and he shall pay as the judges determine.” So, the abortion is treated like the destruction of property, not murder.
There are Christian denominations that allow abortion in most instances; these Christian denominations include the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church USA. The United Methodist Church and Episcopal churches allow abortion in cases of medical necessity, and the United Universalist Association also allows abortion.
Legislation that makes abortion an act of murder would therefore also violate the religious beliefs and practices of these and other Christian denominations and would also violate the Constitution.
Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father of America and a shaper and signer of our Constitution, published a handbook titled “The American Instructor” that featured a detailed section on do-it-yourself abortion and conception prevention. The book was very popular throughout America, especially in the many farming towns where unwanted pregnancies were an economic hardship on farming families.
Franklin’s book should be republished and complimentary copies given to each of the self-appointed “originalists” on the Court who claim that America has always been opposed to abortion.
https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-roe-wade-alito-scotus-hale
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nice summary of the issue.
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“The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Memorizing that section in the Ninth Amendment should be a requirement for graduating high school in the United States.
So many in the news seem to have no idea what our founding documents say or what it means that we all ALREADY live in that meaning . . . and so those same “many” have no idea about what’s at stake.
OR as with much of the religious right, they KNOW, but actually hate it.
. . . and then there is home schooling. CBK
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And here is today’s beautiful post from her:
Chili, Cinnamon Rolls, and a Tim Walz Rally
Ope! A Midwestern Meetup.
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You will be bombarded with folks reporting from the DNC in Chicago in the next few days, so I wanted to tell you about a rally in the heartland first. A rally that included so many rural and small town people. The Walz rally in Omaha. A midwestern meetup that made my day and gave me the hope that will sustain me until the election.
I was raised in the South…in Arkansas. It’s funny because the folks in the deep South always called into question the southerness of Razorback country. Now that I’ve been in Missouri for almost two decades, I notice that people struggle to define Missouri as a midwestern state or a southern state. That is likely owing to our past history with enslavement.
Missouri has an identity crisis. The southern half of the state seems to belong to the south…the northern part, where I live, is most definitely Midwestern. My neighbors use Jell-o and sugar and mayonnaise in so many recipes. That’s a dead giveaway.
Like Northwest Missouri, Nebraska is quintessential Midwestern. And so is Governor Tim Walz.
I had no trouble understanding the idioms and language of Tim Walz at the rally I attended in Omaha on Saturday. Friends, the rally felt like a big potluck. It was familiar and friendly and folksy and all the small-town adjectives.
It was just the feeling I need to get through the next 70-some-odd days…
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The Astro Amphitheater in Omaha at capacity for the Walz rally.
I had a friend send over an email with the Walz rally information a few days ago, so I applied for a ticket and I made the list. I was told they ran out of tickets within 18 hours. And, you can see why…Tim Walz is from Nebraska and his home state was more than happy to invite him back.
The amphitheater had a chyron that said, ‘Welcome Back, Coach!”
I know Omaha fairly well as it is less than a two-hour drive and my family really enjoys visiting Old Market and downtown. I left my house around 7:30, but I didn’t get to Omaha until almost 10 because I stopped for gas, coffee, and some breakfast pizza at Casey’s. I had on my “Dirt Road Democrat” t-shirt which can garner some looks in small towns, but the lady at the Casey’s counter read my shirt and smiled. No comment necessary.
I drove to the amphitheater and found parking and then started the walk to the event space. I ran into a few folks who said, “Wait? Are you Piper for Missouri?” I kept thinking that I wish my kids were with me so they would know that I do more than Tik Toks for a living. This isn’t much of a flex…there aren’t many rural progressives so I kind of stick out.
As I stood in line, I talked to so many who had stories of the fear that red legislatures can instill and that the fear has simmered for years. The anxiety that comes from living like that is remarkable, but so is a new-found feeling of hope.
Hope in the man they were waiting to see. Governor Tim Walz.
The doors were to open at 11am, so I would be waiting for a while in the long line that was beginning to go all the way back to the field I had parked in.
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While waiting in line, I was able to talk to a Nebraska librarian. She worked with others to gather signatures to keep vouchers out of the state and she spoke at length about the books legislators planned to ban — the pervasive feeling of fear when thinking about shelving books in Nebraska public schools. And then she beamed when talking about the feeling of hope that the Harris/Walz ticket brought.
Upgrade to paid
I was able to meet a woman who was with her Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense group. I told her I was a member in Missouri and even started a rural group in which many of the members are gun owners. She said it was hard to keep folks interested in the cause and I know that first-hand, but the fact that Tim Walz is a sensible gun-owner who has a F-rating from the NRA, and stands proudly with those of us who just want to pass common sense gun laws, is a huge help. Common sense includes safe-storage and universal background checks. These are things that most gun owners agree with.
I talked to teachers and hospital administrators and union members and nurses and stay-at-home moms. There were t-shirts representing so many viewpoints. There were ally shirts and rural shirts and public education shirts and pro-choice shirts and Walz shirts.
There were smiles in line. There was no hate. There was no fear. There was hope.
I made it through security and my way inside the theater. The place was filling up quickly. I found a seat and the woman next to me told me she followed me on Twitter and lived outside Mount Ayr, Iowa. I drive through there all the time and even met with a group of about 30 Democrats there last year. She said she had to work or she would have come. She had on an “I’m Speaking” t-shirt. She’s rural. She’s an Iowan — you know the folks who are all supposed to be Trump voters?
I bumped into a friend working with the NE Dems who told me I could stand on the stage behind Walz. Yay! So, I got up and walked by lots of people with guns to the backstage where I could be one of the folks holding the sign, doing the smiling, and getting excited about everything a politician says. Well, I didn’t have to pretend to be enthusiastic. When Tim Walz came onstage with his wife, Gwen, and a former student, it was electric.
Governor Walz talked about rural spaces. He spoke about small towns and small schools. He introduced us to a few of his former high school classmates. He graduated with 24 people.
Walz told a joke about JD Vance likely thinking a Runza is a Hot Pocket. If you know, you know.
Walz talked about the midwestern school delicacy of chili and a cinnamon roll. We all laughed because it is a combination that we all ate in public school cafeterias. It’s a shared experience that we can all smile about.
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Walz then spoke on the hurt that we experienced during a Trump presidency that seems like it was just yesterday. He talked of the hate and the discontent that oozed out with every policy and press conference. He reminded the crowd that we don’t have to go back. Trump can slip away into irrelevance. That Nebraska can return its progressive roots and elect Democrats up and down the ballot.
He spoke on abortion rights and feeding kids and health care and union wages and folks who have been left behind. Omaha could not get enough of his passion and good sense. He could barely speak at times because the theater was literally pulsing with cheers and applause.
He then spoke on something that I think about daily — public schools. As soon as he mentioned how important our educational system is to our country, the crowd erupted into a chant…
Teachers! Teachers! Teachers!
The place exploded and this is where I have to tell you that I nearly cried.
I was a teacher for 16 years and the last few were rough. I miss the kids, but the fact that everything became “political” was too much. Everything I taught could be deemed political…I taught a protest lit unit that was Board Approved and in my literature book, but I felt under the gun with each lesson.
The fact that this theater was filled with Nebraskans and Missourians and Iowans all chanting for public schools and teachers was heart-warming. I am called a “groomer” or a “pedophile” on social media at least a dozen times every day for opposing book bans and for my years in the classroom. The fact that there was so much love for teachers was uplifting. I am positive the current teachers in the theater left feeling they could start this year with something that has been missing in red states…hope.
My aim with telling you about this rally is to help you understand what is happening in small towns and rural parts of the country right now. Omaha is not a rural space, but most of the immediate surrounding areas are. I drove through two hours of cornfields to arrive at the event and so did so many others.
I wrote in another post that the vibes have changed since Joe passed the torch…it remains true and even more so.
I’ll leave you with this: I passed a homemade sign in Ringgold County, Iowa the other day. The entire county has less than 5,000 residents. The sign was planted in the yard of an old farmhouse next to a cornfield. They put duct tape over “Biden” and had written “Kamala” in Sharpie on an old Biden/Harris sign. I travel this route monthly, and have for years, and I never saw the original sign in the yard. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have it out in 2020.
That means something, friend. It’s enthusiasm. It’s hope. It’s rural and small town folks coming around. LFG.
~Jess
Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS
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interesting post. I especially like the comments on Missouri and its history of trying to be either midwestern or southern. I have often opined that the Mason Dixon line has in my life become a small circle around each xenophobic individual.
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Diane and ALL, from CBK:FYI: This note/in my box from PROPUBLICA
ON VOUCHERS ALL COPIED BELOWDear Reader, “Universal voucher” programs allow families to use public funding to underwrite private education or homeschooling for their children.
Supporters say voucher programs give parents more control over their children’s education by allowing them to use public dollars to choose the schools they believe are best, including those that are privately run. Opponents argue that vouchers siphon tax dollars from public education and allow funding to flow into private schools without holding them accountable if they fail children.
More states will urge voters to try to pass or reject private school choice programs in November.
A Virtual Program
‘Understanding the Intensifying Political Battle
Over School Vouchers
Wednesday, Aug. 21
4 p.m. Eastern time
Register Here
During this virtual program, ProPublica editor Zahira Torres will welcome three ProPublica reporters for a roundtable discussion on the ongoing school vouchers debate. Can’t attend? Register to receive a recording of the program. Hope you can join us, Rocio Ortega/Proud ProPublican.
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